We are thinking of appealing. We have found lots of extremely useful information (and support) on this forum- wonderful resource!

Looking at our academic evidence, our school use NFER tests and of course SATs. They don't use CATs. I would like to relate the standardised scores to centiles, but can't find any information specific to NFER tests. You have provided a detailed link for CATs which I have looked at, but do the NFER standardised scores relate to centiles in the same way? Certainly the groupings have the same score ranges and names - Very High, above average, etc. Can I assume the centiles are the same?

I feel I am already bothering school on too many issues - mostly SEN related, and am afraid they will get fed up of me!

I thought I would try this question here in case it was generally known and published.

So many threads to follow up, but all the guidance and information on this site definitely make things much, much easier than they would be without it. Keep up the great work everyone, it's very much appreciated.

Thanks for the info everyone. The table on the NFER link from tiredmum is also much the same standardisation as the CATs table, so I think I will work on that basis for interpreting our NFER standardised scores too.

I'd like to say I've forgotten about this whole thing since my last post ... but that would be far from honest!

We sent off the initial form, together with headteacher summary and a one page 'appeal'. On the form itself we said 'supporting evidence to follow'.

We are gathering that evidence together now. I understand it is a good idea to send as much as possible in advance, so will include NFER results, optional SATS and Y5 report. I will probably include an EP report done previously as well.

Part of our appeal is extenuating circumstances due to specific learning difficulties, but having read all the advice on this site, we are going to try to make this a smaller part of our presentation than the academic evidence. Having said that we will need to make reference to the difficulties in order to try to explain one anomaly in otherwise strong results.

I assume we need written evidence to support these difficulties so we are able to prove them if asked.

My question is whether we should include these pieces of evidence in the documentation we send for consideration before the appeal hearing, or whether we would be better to take sufficient copies on the day and only present them if asked for proof. Any thoughts? Thanks.

It's not unreasonable to expect a panel to digest a short letter on the day, but anything more substantial, and you might risk having the hearing adjourned to a later date.

While it's a good idea not to overplay extenuating circumstances, I think it would be best to submit all your evidence in advance, and just provide a brief covering letter saying that this is background information to your case (labelled 'appendix 1', 'appendix 2', etc.).

Then, when it comes to the hearing, don't say too much about the additional evidence. It's already there on the record for the panel to see. Don't go out of your way to highlight it. Leave it up to them to ask you questions about it if they wish.

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